Vic bottle manufacturer sheds 70 jobs

A drop in beer and wine sales across Australia has cost 70 Melbourne workers their jobs at a glass bottle manufacturer.

O-I Australia will shed the positions as it closes one of three furnaces at its Spotswood plant in March, with the job losses to occur by June.

Australian Workers Union Victorian secretary Cesar Melhem said the Spotswood plant employs 320 people and the jobs to go include 50 glass manufacturing workers, with the rest coming from trade and engineering positions.

The Spotswood plant makes glass bottles mainly for the wine and beer industry, which has seen a recent 15 per cent decrease in production, he said.

"The decision to reduce our Melbourne plant's furnaces from three to two follows ongoing deterioration in market conditions in Australia and weak consumer sentiment," he said in a statement.

"This had led to declining food and beverage sales across the country, particularly in the beer and wine segments."

Mr Melhem said the AWU had been given assurances that the redundancies would be voluntary, but the union was concerned about the long-term future of remaining jobs.

"It now becomes a question: will the plant be viable long-term by having two furnaces? Not long ago they used to have five furnaces," he said.

"Our members are a bit nervous about the future, and rightly so. We are looking at sitting down with the company to look at putting a plan in place to make sure we can secure the viability of the plant for the next five, 10, 20 years."